


I Am What I Am

by pudupudu



Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Angst, F/M, Gender Identity, M/M, Sexuality, cross-dressing, h/c
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-04-03
Updated: 2012-04-03
Packaged: 2017-11-02 23:46:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/374703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pudupudu/pseuds/pudupudu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Standing on a footstool to see himself fully in the bathroom mirror, Douglas had experienced his first taste of freedom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chess_ka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chess_ka/gifts).



> This fill was inspired by pictures of the wonderful Roger Allam in La Cage Aux Folles and started life on Tumblr before Chess_ka made me post it here.

He used to watch, transfixed, as his mother prepared for a night out. There was such an attention to detail, even an artistry about it: hair just so, lipstick shade precise, shoes to match the bag. Knowing she found it difficult to apply nail varnish to her dominant hand and that her favoured method of dressing her hair would often come unravelled before she could apply sufficient spray, he often wanted to ask if he could help, but he knew that the topic was somehow taboo.

He’d asked to help with dinner once and had been met with glances that wavered between surprise and derision from his father and brother before his mother had laughed and informed him in no uncertain terms that the kitchen ‘wasn’t his place.’ Neither was his mother’s small dressing room, which always felt so airy and smelt of floral perfume and lightly scented powders, ‘his place.’

Instead, ‘his place’ was a world of greys and browns. Of itchy wool and uncomfortably starched shirts which were as stifling to him as most other aspects of his gender enforced domain. There was no soul to his father’s world: unvarying routine- work shoes, Sunday best, slippers, pipe. Always the same, cloistered and drab. He learnt to equate the term ‘respectable’ with another adjective altogether: _hateful_.

And so it was that Douglas Richardson began his apprenticeship in the art of deception. At home, he would pretend to be a model son but outside of the house and within his own mind he would be someone quite different indeed. A few small playground trades- marbles exchanged for necklaces, sweets for eye shadows- and some minor sleights of hand later and he had his first full outfit.

Standing on a footstool to see himself fully in the bathroom mirror, Douglas had experienced his first taste of freedom. Sitting on his bed later that night, stomach tight and empty from a lack of supper, he had experienced his first taste of shame. Tugged into his room by an ear still ringing with enraged remarks, he was given ample time to reflect upon his recently discovered ‘perversion.’ He didn’t need to know what that word meant to understand the implications of its application.

Tears that had originated of shock and misery at having so disappointed his parents, soon became those of frustration before drying in their tracks, thwarted by the fierce determination that even at this young age had always been his bailiwick. In the dead of night he snuck downstairs and stole back a pink beaded bracelet from the bin and he fell asleep with a hand curled tightly around it.


	2. Chapter 2

For Douglas, puberty hadn’t so much ‘happened’ as it had struck him with the force of a freight train. His voice became foreign to his own ears and his body top heavy and ungainly. At first it had shaken his confidence to the extent that he seemed to lose almost all of his previously gregarious nature. For months, he did all he could to avoid speaking to anyone, becoming a virtual recluse as he confined himself to the library. When he looked in the mirror a broad shouldered imposter stared back at him with dead eyes.

Despite his internal conflict with his external image, his academic work didn’t falter and neither his parents nor his teachers seemed to notice anything amiss. All, that is, but one of them. Years later Douglas would reflect that Mr Timmons, eccentric Music teacher and bane of the otherwise conservative staff room, had probably saved his life. He had taught him to use the rough instrument that was his voice and turn it into something that both transcended and became him. He had control once more, and not a moment too soon.

Spirit newly invigorated, Douglas began to put his natural resourcefulness to good use as he looked for ways to compensate for his now undeniably masculine physique. Gone were the days when he could slip away into town with a wig and a dress and not raise a single eyebrow but there was no sense in mourning for the past. Instead, he had to work with what he had and turn perceived physical detriments into advantages, just as he had learnt to do with his voice.

With the funds from various after school and weekend jobs (of one sort or another) in his pocket, Douglas began to experiment with colour and style. Now that a natural look was out of the question, his make-up became more and more extravagant. Clothes, too, were chosen for their flamboyant patterns and cuts which would show off his legs whilst distracting from his upper body. Refinement would come later, for now he was enjoying the rediscovery of an essence of himself which he had thought lost and unsalvagable.

He had become exceedingly adept at hiding his proclivities from his family. Having passed through the stage of believing that their aspersions about his ‘freakishness’ were true, he had come out the other side armed with a confidence that he was right to go with his instincts and the research to prove that he was not alone. There had been a few hairy moments when he had been careless but items of clothing could be explained away with a quite sickening ease- particularly to his father, who seemed happy- proud, even- with his belief in his son’s newly found sexual prowess.

Only Douglas’s elder brother had whittled out a modicum of the truth. Nicholas had come home from university with tales of congress and conquest only to find that his sibling didn’t provide him with the receptive and congratulatory audience he had been expecting. In fact, Douglas’s distaste was expressed in no uncertain terms as he presented an argument against misogyny which was at once articulate and passionate. Too passionate. Forcing himself into silent stillness, Douglas held his breath and waited for the inevitable conclusions.

Recent heartfelt accusations that Nicholas was a “sexually obsessed, backward thinking, hedonistic Neanderthal” notwithstanding, the elder Richardson was no idiot. It was now a case of adding two and two and coming up with an answer that was even vaguely in the region of four. Rising to his now considerable height and squaring his shoulders, Douglas observed the cogs turning in his brother’s mind with a meticulously shaped eyebrow quirked in the wry manner he had been perfecting.

“So… you want to be a girl?”

Douglas sighed. As judgements went, he supposed, the hammer could have fallen harder.

“No. I want to be myself.”


End file.
